Educational Science

Charles Dickens Plotted to Send His Sane Wife to an Asylum

Being married to the Victorian author Charles Dickens was definitely not the best of times. Long-hidden letters reveal that Dickens sought to have his wife, Catherine, forcibly consigned to an institution — a scheme that fell apart when doctors found no evidence of mental illness in the woman. At first,...

Scientists Piped Music Into Women's Wombs to See If Fetuses Like Freddie Mercury

When Freddie Mercury sang, Mama, life had just begun, in the second verse of Bohemian Rhapsody, he probably didn't have an audience of fetuses in mind. Let's consider it a happy coincidence, then, that unborn babies really do seem to love Queen. According to a new, as-yet-unpublished study by the...

Weevil eye (Image credit: Courtesy of Nikon Small World)From Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, photographer Yousef Al Habshi secured first place in the 2018 Nikon Small World photography contest using reflected light at a magnification of 20x to record this image of the eye of a Metapocyrtus subquadrulifer beetle. [Read...

What Are Radio Waves?

Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation best-known for their use in communication technologies, such as television, mobile phones and radios. These devices receive radio waves and convert them to mechanical vibrations in the speaker to create sound waves. The radio-frequency spectrum is a relatively small part of the...

Watching People Beatbox in an MRI Machine Will Blow Your Mind

Patil is a beatboxer, a musician who can create convincing drum beats and other percussive sounds using only her vocal tract. She's also a researcher at the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) at the University of Southern California (USC), where she and her colleagues are working to understand how...

Why Giant Tortoise Sex Became the Basis of a Key 'Game of Thrones' Sound Effect

When you hear the signature roars of Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion — the three key dragon cast members in Game of Thrones — tortoise sex is probably the furthest thing from your mind. And yet, according to series sound designer Paula Fairfield, the mating cries of giant tortoises are among...

French Painting Stolen by Nazis in 1940 Raid to Be Returned to Owner's Descendants

An artwork by Paul Signac — a painter who helped invent the pointillist style — was stolen from a French home during a Nazi raid in 1940. Signac's painting recently resurfaced in a private collection, and German cultural authorities said it will be returned to the descendants of its original...

After a Zombie Apocalypse, Here Are 9 Keys to Rebuilding a Civilization

In AMC's The Walking Dead (which airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST), now in its ninth season, characters have survived years after the zombie apocalypse began and are now working to expand their simple communities into a stronger, more capable and civilized society. You're gonna be evidence that...

How to Survive the 'Game of Thrones,' According to Science

If you want to survive the Game of Thrones, it pays to be noble, female and flexible about the concept of loyalty. In a new published study (yes, really), epidemiologists at Macquarie University in Australia analyzed the deaths of the key characters in the Game of Thrones HBO series and...